


Cumberholmes comment fic

by messageredacted



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Cumberholmes, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-14
Updated: 2012-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-29 13:15:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/320306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/messageredacted/pseuds/messageredacted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cumberholmes (Twitter RP) comment fic. Various prompts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written on 24 February 2011.

The space under the desk isn’t quite big enough for two grown men, but as long as Gregson doesn’t take a deep breath, they should be fine.

“Do you have any suspects?” Lestrade whispers, balancing his thermos on top of his knees. The silhouette of Robin the ficus is clear in front of the window. Hasn’t moved yet.

Gregson gives him a look. “You’re making fun of me.”

“Not at all,” Lestrade replies. “Tampering with police property is serious. We need to—” His serious façade cracks slightly, “—nip this problem in the bud.”

Gregson sighs and listens to Lestrade try to cover a laugh, even though the two of them are pressed so close together that Gregson can feel Lestrade's shoulders shake.

Something rustles somewhere. Gregson touches Lestrade’s shoulder.

“Shh,” he breathes. Lestrade goes still. There is a long silence.

“It was nothing,” Lestrade hisses finally.

“Don’t scare them off.”

“I won’t. I don’t want to soil your only chance. I mean foil.”

They wait again, but whatever made the noise is gone now.

“That was a terrible pun,” Gregson adds.

“I know. I’m done. For now.”

“Imagine my re-leaf.”

Lestrade snorts, and this time Gregson smiles as well.


	2. Chapter 2

Mrs. Hudson comes out of the flat when she hears the creak on the stairs. “Sherlock, do you know where my remote—Oh, hello Mycroft.”

Mycroft is just pulling on his coat at the bottom of the stairs. He smiles at her, looking exhausted. “Good morning.”

“I’m brewing a pot of tea, if you’d like.”

“I really should be getting in to the office.” Mycroft covers a yawn. “Ah, well, maybe just one.”

Mrs. Hudson leads the way back into the flat. “A late night?”

“John Cage karaoke,” Mycroft admits. He takes a seat at her table and Mrs. Hudson pours them both some tea. “I hope we didn’t disturb you.”

“You didn’t.” Mrs. Hudson hesitates. “Only my remote is missing, and I could hardly hear the telly.”

“Ah. I’m terribly sorry. Your remote is upstairs. Sherlock was in a bit of a mood— Well. I’m sure you understand.”

“As long as I know where it is.” Mrs. Hudson takes a sip of tea. There is a companionable silence.

“Thank you,” Mycroft says suddenly. Mrs. Hudson glances up. “For taking care of him. You might not be able to tell, but he appreciates it.”

“I can tell,” Mrs. Hudson says.


	3. Chapter 3

There are neat stacks of folders all over Bracken’s desk when Harry comes in with a cup of tea in the morning. Bracken himself is carefully peeling a label off a blue file folder and replacing it with a new one. His tie is draped over his shoulder, keeping it from dragging across his work.

“Hello, Mr. Holmes,” Harry says cheerfully. “Here’s your tea.” She sets it next to his elbow.

“Good morning, Harriet,” Bracken says. He straightens his tie and takes the cup of tea.

“What are you doing?” Harry glances at the folders. Bracken has taken all of the folders out of the filing cabinet. They are sorted by colour.

“The cabinet was a mess.” Bracken glares at the cabinet as if it offended him personally. “I’m alphabetising it.”

“But it was alphabetised,” Harry says.

“The labels were alphabetised,” Bracken admits. “But the folders themselves were not.”

“The colours, you mean? But I sorted them by colour.”

Bracken stares at her for a moment. “Red, then orange, then yellow?” he says slowly, as if waiting for realisation to strike her.

“That’s how they are in the rainbow,” Harry says.

“Red starts with an R, Harriet,” Bracken says grimly.


	4. Chapter 4

Their business contact is sitting at the card table in the center of the echoing warehouse, his hands folded in front of him. His head is dipped down as if he’s deep in prayer, which is, Jim has to admit, highly unlikely.

Seb, a step ahead of him, holds out a hand to Jim, although Jim has already stopped. They’re still thirty feet away, but from here it’s not difficult to see the Pollock splatter of blood and brains on the floor behind the man’s chair. The dark colour of the man’s bulky coat hides most of the mess from sight.

“Back to the car,” Seb says urgently, his eyes scanning the catwalks overhead. But it’s already too late for that.

“Hello… James,” says a shaky voice overhead and slightly behind them. Both of them turn around and look up.

There’s a kid up on the catwalk, wrapped in a heavy parka. His face is tearstained, and there is a mobile headset in one ear. A red laser sight hovers over his chest. Jim sucks in air through his teeth, though it’s not fear that he’s feeling.

“You have… the best ideas,” the kid continues, his wide-eyed gaze fixed on Jim as if he expects Jim to save him. “I just couldn’t… resist.”

“Two snipers in the catwalks,” Seb breathes to Jim. The minute adjustment of his stance tells Jim that Seb is shifting to shield Jim with his body, which is enough to tell Jim where the snipers are.

“You stay on your s-side of the p-pond,” the kid says. “And I’ll stay on m-mine. Sorry, b-baby. It’s not you. It’s m-me.”

“I’m not here to compete with you,” Jim says loudly. He’s really, really not. The less he has to deal with the costumed freaks in Gotham, the better.

“I always knew you were a… a r-reasonable guy. Too bad I c-can’t say the s-same for myse—”

A shot rings out and the kid’s head snaps backward. He takes a stumbling step back and hits the railing. He tips over.

Seb is already grabbing Jim’s arm and dragging him away from the falling body, looking over his shoulder towards the snipers. Jim twists in his grasp, looking desperately towards the card table they’re backing towards. He doesn’t know what makes him look, except that he can hear someone laughing in the catwalk.

The kid’s body hits the warehouse floor with a wet thud. Jim’s eyes track a bright red dot trailing across the card table and dancing up over their business contact’s dead shoulder. Things are lining up in Jim’s head, and the kid still hasn’t exploded, and their dead business contact is wearing a heavy coat—

Jim clamps a hand on Seb’s arm and hauls him away from the table. Seb stumbles, but he catches Jim’s gaze and seems to instantly understand. He surges forward.

They make it three steps before everything goes red.


	5. Chapter 5

Wigs is sound asleep on the sofa, his face buried in the cushions. Some time tomorrow he is going to wake up in a lot of trouble, but at least he’s going to wake up, so Mary figures she’s done her good deed for the evening.

Jim’s flat is…surprisingly posh. It really shouldn’t be a surprise because, well, this is Jim. But Mary can feel her eyebrows raising as she walks to the wall of windows looking out onto the balcony, with the night city beyond. Or morning. The sky is already turning pink at the edges.

Seb, who seems to have had more mephedrone canapes and alcohol than all of them combined, is making his careful way up the spiral staircase, one hand gripping the railing. He had kicked off his shoes at the bottom of the stairs to give himself better traction on the glass steps. It is a hilarious sight but Mary really, really, really shouldn’t laugh. She bites her tongue instead, and turns to find Jim watching her.

He still has the sort of not-quite-there look that he had at the party, his pupils too big, his body too…relaxed. Mary is entirely comfortable in her sexuality and will freely admit that Jim is a highly attractive man, but like this he sort of looks like someone’s younger brother. Thank god Mary has no maternal instincts whatsoever.

“There’s a spare room upstairs,” Jim says, his hands on the back of the sofa. Wigs curls up tighter on the sofa, murmuring something sleepily. A fuzzy white head pops out of his coat pocket and looks around before disappearing again. Mary blinks at it, wondering if she accidentally had one of the canapes after all, before she remembers the ferret.

“But where is Seb going to—” Mary stops. “Oh. No, that’s okay. I can just kip on the chair.”

On the stairs, Seb curses. He’s almost all the way up, although the transparency of the steps, combined with the fact that he is completely shitfaced, is making it more of a trial than it should be.

“That chair’s not comfortable to sleep in.”

“I only have a few hours before I need to head out anyway. My first student arrives in…” Mary casts about for a clock, then digs her mobile out of her pocket. “Oh god. Three hours.” Maybe she shouldn’t have had that drink. Or better yet, maybe she should have another one.

Jim shrugs. “Suit yourself.” He lets go of the back of the sofa and goes for the stairs. Seb has disappeared upstairs. Jim makes the stairs with far more dexterity, although he moves with the sort of exaggerated deliberateness that people use when they know they’re drunk.

Mary drops down into the chair next to the sofa. The back is far too short for her to recline, and the seat is too shallow for her to curl up.

Oh, fuck it. She gets up again and tugs off her high heels, hooking the straps in her finger. It feels good to walk across the cool floor in her stockings. She takes the stairs.

Light is spilling out of the room to her right when she reaches the top of the stairs. The door is open, letting her see a narrow strip of a large bed. Seb is lying across it, shirtless but otherwise dressed, and possibly already asleep. Jim moves briefly past the open doorway and then disappears again.

The center door is open onto a dark, empty bedroom. The bed is neatly made and looks very, very welcoming. Mary drops her shoes to the floor at the foot of the bed and sweeps her hair away from the back of her neck to unbutton the top of her dress.

“In case you don’t want to walk around in the nude,” comes a voice from the doorway, “I brought this.”

“Jesus,” Mary hisses, turning around. Jim is standing in the doorway, holding a white shirt. “Make a noise when you walk, would you?”

The room is dark and Jim is backlit so it is hard to see his expression. He tosses the shirt at her and she catches it. “You’re welcome.”

“Thanks.” She turns puts the shirt down on the bed. This time his foot makes a faint noise on the rug, which may or may not have been deliberate, and she doesn’t jump when she feels fingers touch the buttons at the back of her neck.

“So many buttons,” Jim says in a way that is almost playful, except that there is still a note of something other to it, something she can’t read. There is something inside her head that is saying warning, warning, although there is something a little lower in her body that is paying very close attention to the way his fingers are working their way down the buttons of her dress.

She turns her head to peer over her shoulder, holding her hair out of the way. “There’s merit to taking—” she starts to say, and then the words ‘your time’ die on her lips when she catches his gaze.

His fingers work the last buttons loose at the base of her spine. His hands hover there for just a second longer, then drop to his sides. He takes a step back.

“Good night, Mary,” he says. He turns and disappears out the door again. She doesn’t move until she hears his bedroom door shut behind him.

When she crawls into bed, wrapped in his shirt, it takes her a long time to fall asleep.


End file.
